Novel

My lecture was a plea for contradictory behaviour in any situation that is set up in such a way as to be contradictory or disadvantageous from the outset. I was not talking about pictures or painting that had themes of this kind, nor about behaviour that was recognizably contradictory, but about artists who try to act invisibly or alternatively about how to identify such attitudes or actions.

Among my illustrations are numerous book covers and many of them are from the literature of the Dandyism. For that reason I have decided to print in the appendix Oswald Wiener’s booklist, which I knew from ‘Dandyism I/II’, the seminar that he conducted together with Friedrich Wolfram Heubach at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in 2000/2001. It has been revised and brought up to date by him. Markus Ziegler produced the graphic design for the book. The idea for the cover, a spawning sea anemone, a hybrid creature, came from him, as did the title of the book, ‘Alien Hybrid Creatures’.

Dandyism needs neither painting nor art, but a knowledge of Dandyism can be useful for artists. For that reason the book is called Außerirdische Zwitterwesen/Alien Hybrid Creatures. From such formulae the most gruesome and the most harmless actions and things can arise. Malice of course need not be splendid and magnificent.